Piano re-builds and restorations

Style-X

Blüthner No.80538. A “Style-X” (7’6″/228cm) grand piano, built in 1909. I found the piano in a church hall, where it was being used to store used chewing gum, and to stack chairs on! It’s had a pretty hard life, but will soon be restored to it’s former glory.

Note the dust on the frame to the right. There’s so much dust and dirt on the soundboard and socket rails (damperguides) that in places it was touching the underside of the strings..

Tension off, old strings measured so I can replace them with the correct diameter wire in a few months time, and here I’m in the throes of removing them.

The casework has suffered pretty badly. One of the worst things to happen was the fitting of these rubber wheeled casters. Unfortunately, this task involved cutting the original mounting point off… One of my jobs will be to remove these, and make new tapers to mount a set of original Blüthner casters.

One of today’s jobs was to order a new set of hammers for the piano. As you can see, the old hammers have been very badly treated (the hammers should be a lovely teardrop shape – not looking like a potato…!).

The piano is now back from being polyestered, and has had a new soundboard fitted. I’m currently working on the new wrest plank, and doing some action work – the keys are receiving extensive attention…!

The white keys have had almost all their repair work finished, and are ready to be covered.

The action is almost ready to be assembled. Here I’m fitting the new hills to the WNG levers. In the background you can see the fully strung, and up to pitch (A-440) piano awaiting its new action.

Before and after work on the legs. Notice the casters have been replaced with original brass items. This involved re-building the end of the leg which had been cut off to fit the rubber casters pictured on the left.